


The Circularity of Feeling

by menecio



Series: This Simple Feeling (a K/S zine) [3]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Christmas Morning, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 12:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17141594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menecio/pseuds/menecio
Summary: Spock wraps up his Christmas present for Kirk in an unconventional way. Kirk isn’t pleased, but he—hopefully—will be when he gets to his gift.





	The Circularity of Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for the December 2017 issue of the _This Simple Feeling_ K/S zine. Then, because I am me, I completely forgot to upload it, so I thought now would be a good time. I would like to edit some things—THE TYPOS ARE KILLING ME—but I'm very adamant about leaving it as it got printed, so apologies for any bits that read awkwardly—and enjoy the fluff!
> 
> I made an ambience for this story! Check it out here: https://movies-other.ambient-mixer.com/the-circularity-of-feeling

“This is literally—the dumbest—thing—you’ve done.”

“I am Vulcan.”

“That only—makes it— _worse_.”

Kirk struggles for three point two seconds where he sits cross-legged in front of the Christmas tree, then gives up and just tears open the cardboard box. Pieces of cardboard and tape fly to the floor, joining many other boxes in a similar state of destruction. He’s no longer trying to be careful with the packaging. The first five boxes, he opened with good humour, but his expression grew increasingly stormier the more boxes he found blocking his way.

Outside, the overcast skies of San Francisco lend themselves to a pearly rather than a golden Christmas morning. Light struggles through the drawn curtains of their living room, diffused and ethereal. Still, the sun is warm, and as it crawls higher the thin shadows of dawn begin to recede.

Spock watches Kirk from a short distance away, also sitting cross-legged on the floor. He took care to seal all the boxes with Christmas-themed adhesive tape. He thought Kirk might find it amusing. At first, he did. In retrospect, Spock should have known that such a detail would make his captain lose his patience faster after a certain point.

At last, Kirk gives a shout of triumph and yanks something out of the torn box. It’s a smaller cardboard box; this one has gingerbread men on the strips of tape. Kirk groans.

“Are you for real?” He looks at Spock. “Are you serious?”

“Have you ever known me not to be?”

With a deranged look, Kirk lifts the box and shakes it. The present trapped within rattles slightly, although the sound is muffled by the many boxes Kirk still has to defeat. “Exhibit freaking A, honey.”

Spock thinks it prudent not to reply. Kirk does not have all the facts.

Taking his silence for acquiescence, Kirk returns his attention to his present. He throws aside the empty box he just destroyed. It hits the tree, disturbing some of the decorations. A red ball—which is, in fact, an overly round Santa Claus—falls and boings in Spock’s general direction. He stops it and sets it on his lap, on top of his own present. He opened it twenty-seven minutes ago, Kirk having done him the favour of placing it inside a single box—although it was a very glitter-filled box. He might have to throw out the set of pyjamas he’s currently wearing. And the carpet.

Kirk sets his newest enemy down in front of him. He scowls at it, his bright eyes dark, then picks it up and turns it around, inspecting it. After he finds what he was looking for, he starts clawing at the merry lines of gingerbread men. He digs a nail under a stripe of tape and tears it loose with a vicious grin. He removes the other tapes with similar practicality and delight. He’s done with the box in record time, tossing it aside to begin attacking the smaller one it contained at once.

“I see you have found a method,” Spock says.

“Yeah, if I start top to bottom, the tapes come off easier.” The tip of Kirk’s tongue sticks out from the corner of his mouth, pink and curled as the captain tries to get to the core of his present. “But this is still hell. You’d better hope this is worth it.”

Spock does not hope, per se. Hope is an impulse, the expectation of a certain outcome to take place over all others based on emotion rather than the gathering of empirical data. To hope serves no sensible purpose. Spock does, however, experience a high level of partiality toward one of the scenarios the end of this present endeavour—pun, unexpectedly, intended—may prompt.

“You don’t even celebrate Christmas,” Kirk mutters as he disposes of yet another box.

“I have celebrated Christmas for the past eight years,” says Spock.

“Reluctantly,” Kirk points out.

“Even so, I have.”

“You were supposed to say you _haven’t_ been celebrating Christmas reluctantly, Spock. You were supposed to say you finally see the appeal in nonsensical Human traditions that perpetuate materialism and whatever. Give me the whole backhanded-compliment speech.”

“I would rather not.”

Kirk looks at him, pausing in his unwrapping. “You’re weird today. What’s up?”

Spock schools his face into perfect blankness. “Nothing.”

“Didn’t you like your present? I can return it. We can get you something else.”

Something stirs in Spock’s chest, an objection to the idea that Kirk could ever think he’s capable of disappoint him. Spock strokes the tricorder resting on his lap with his thumb. Despite never voicing his intention to get the latest model, Kirk has yet again proven to know his mind without need for words.

“I found it adequate,” he says.

“ ‘Adequate’,” Kirk repeats, a smile brightening his face. He shakes his head and goes back to unwrapping his present. “Well, I’m good with ‘adequate’. I would’ve been worried if you’d called it ‘acceptable’. Or, er—what’s that word that you used the other day? That made Chekov cry.”

“ ‘Middling’. And he did not cry.”

“It was a near thing.”

“Perhaps.”

Kirk chuckles, finally ripping open the smallest cardboard box and dumping its contents onto his palm. His laugh cuts off the moment he realises what he’s looking at. Spock focuses on keeping his shoulders from tensing up, on his breathing, on the warmth of the sunlight filtering through the windows. Try as he might, at the forefront of his mind is Kirk: Kirk’s body, Kirk’s hitched breath, Kirk’s bright eyes.

Kirk gawps, then says, “What.”

“It is the final box,” Spock murmurs.

The smallest one, made of black velvet and holding a plain gold band within its cushioned interior.

Many would argue there is no need to become married in the Human way. What could possibly be more intimate than the organic sharing of the mindscape that Spock and Kirk already practice? Life in harmony, accomplished. But for there to be harmony, a balance must be struck. If they are married—and not even formally—in the way of Spock’s people but not in the way of Kirk’s, doesn’t that invite to imbalance?

Is Spock using logic to justify a bout of emotionalism?

Perhaps, but he digresses. The crux of the matter remains. Kirk has given Spock all he’s wanted and more. Spock wants to give Kirk the same. To have Kirk in the tradition of his people is not enough; Spock wishes to own and be owned, to be certain that when Kirk chose him it was understood that Spock was also choosing Kirk.

Spock wants Kirk to understand that when they said _never and always_ , eternity was conjured. This isn’t the kind of love Spock has experienced with others; it’s constant, a burning ember in the hearthfire, rich and deep and vibrant in its softness. He tried to excise it, once, and then could only abandon himself to it. What he experiences with Kirk, how he feels about him, has a sense of finality that Spock can’t shake. He is certain that Kirk is the last of his loves, and also the first one, in a way that can’t be put into words, in the language of katras and fate.

Hence the ring. Physical proof of his everlasting fidelity; a representation of his devotion. Vulcans aren’t particularly fond of symbolisms, yet there is a meaningfulness in the abstraction of the act that can’t be ignored. In their case, Spock believes, even moreso: golden for a golden man, and an untarnishable ore for a pure being.

Kirk finally looks up. “You don’t expect me to say yes after all those boxes, right?”

The utterance is whimsical, but Kirk’s words are tremulous, heavy with a level of emotion that Kirk struggles to contain. His eyes are wide. His voice is shaking. His hold on the box is firm. There’s a heady mix of hope and certainty in the set of his jaw.

Spock thinks to himself that if love were quantifiable, it wouldn’t be love.

“It was my intention to provide you with a humorous yet endearing anecdote,” Spock explains, back to stroking his new tricorder to keep his tone even, “for when people ask you to tell them the story of our Terran engagement and subsequent wedding.”

Kirk laughs. It’s a familiar sound, yet it startles Spock—the honesty of it, the clear fondness in the booming mirth, the fact that he can cause this reaction. Spock hasn’t learned to take it for granted yet, and he doubts he ever will.

He’s still marvelling at it when Kirk crawls forward and clears Spock’s lap of his present and the Christmas decoration. He kisses Spock soundly on the lips, a wet smack that’s oddly chaste in its intensity.

Then Kirk makes himself at home in Spock’s lap, wrapping his legs around Spock’s waist and his arms around Spock’s neck, the velvet box pressed between Spock’s shoulder blades. Kirk buries his nose in the dip of Spock’s clavicle—Kirk’s dubbed ‘snuggling nook’—and breathes.

“Jim, the glitter,” Spock reminds him.

“I love you,” Kirk says.

Spock doesn’t reply. There are no words. He returns the embrace with a little more strength.

The shape of Kirk’s smile tickles the juncture where Spock’s shoulder meets his neck. He pulls back and opens the box. The ring is a simple thing, meant to suit Kirk’s taste in jewellery. Inside, Spock had the word ‘beloved’ engraved in Vulcan. He supposes his own ring could sport the same word in English. There’s a satisfying symmetry to it.

For a moment, Kirk just stares. Then he lifts his gaze and grins. Spock’s heart wrings itself in Spock’s side, and Spock lets out a short gasp that’s both pain and awe. Kirk lifts the ring and hands it to him, then closes the velvet box and sets it aside.

He offers his hand, still grinning. “Put a ring on it then.”

Spock does, savouring the rough caress of Kirk’s consciousness against his own that their touching hands ignite. They don’t say anything immediately after, and neither do they move from their spot on the floor. Kirk turns his hand slowly, and they watch the ring glint in the morning light, a promise as much as a radiant prophesy.

Then Kirk kisses Spock on the lips again, this time lingering and sweet, and Spock thinks of eternity.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Prompt:** http://nadiahilker.tumblr.com/post/133627477715/ “i did that annoying thing where i put loads of smaller boxes inside one big box and you’re getting really mad but you don’t know that the ring is in the smallest box and i can’t wait to see your face”


End file.
